My computer is only three years old, but seems to be dying on me. I feel I should place it in a box, dig a hole, and bury it after a short, tearful service. Or perhaps I should drive to the local crematorium. Personally, I am all in favor of cremation.
Actually, I am being overly dramatic. It’s not much that my computer is dying, but more that I’m outgrowing it. The machine, itself, is working just fine – it’s an HP Pavilion d3, by the way – but it can no longer cope with the way I have taught myself to operate. Simply put, by the time I have loaded up the various programs I interact with, and connect to the cloud in various ways, the darned thing runs out of threads and starts to freeze, scroll jerkily, and otherwise slow me up mightily. And yes, I have tried switching off just about everything I don’t need, and it is still not enough. And yes, I have upgraded my RAM to 8GBs (which seems quite adequate).
I find it ironic that my search for productivity has led me to this pretty pass. There was a time when I felt quite content to have WordPerfect up – just one program – up and running. Now, my list of absolutely vital programs seems to be expanding like Jack’s Beanstalk. Let me list the principle culprits.
- BROWSER – Google Chrome, typically with ten windows open.
- WORD-PROCESSOR – MS Word, typically with several windows open.
- DATABASE – Zotero
- DATABASE – Evernote
- BLOGGING SOFTWARE – Windows Live Writer
- CACHEMAN – So I can monitor resource usage in real time.
- SECURITY SOFTWARE – Norton Security Suite
- BACKUP SOFTWARE – Carbonite
- CLOUD SERVICES – SkyDrive
- HARD DRIVE MONITORING – Sentinel
Why two databases you may ask? Trust me, I have my reasons.
The good news is that I genuinely do work faster this way. Nonetheless, I am now faced with the formidable task of buying another computer, and then transferring all my work.
I’ll miss the HP. It has served me extremely well.
I’ll be getting emotional next.
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